Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(28)

He’d been eating.

He’d been sleeping.

More than the physical, however, he seemed changed in other ways—his movements more languid, his smile easier—his smile existent.

He’d been well.

For a moment, Grace wondered if perhaps she was wrong, and it wasn’t he, after all. Except of course it was, because she would never mistake him. He was written upon her, for better or worse. Etched with desire and sorrow and anger.

Seizing the last, she watched his gaze slide over the duchess’s extravagant gown, taking in the wild costume even as she extended a hand. He accepted it with perfect manners and bowed low over it as she delighted in the treatment. “Ah! Another surprising discovery among the rabble.”

“Did you think I would not stay for the revelry?” He offered a look of joking offense, so utterly unlike him, and the room around Grace began to tilt.

He’d heard her. He’d listened. He’d left her.

“I think you’ve never cared for revelry before,” the duchess intoned, leaning in close—close enough for something in Grace to hesitate. “Why start now?”

“Perhaps I’ve never had such winning company,” he offered, his lips curving in a magnificent smile, leaving Grace with the wild, momentary thought that she might be going mad. And then he turned and met her eyes, and the damn man winked.

He didn’t recognize her.

He couldn’t. Nothing about his response to her indicated that he recognized her in the slightest. How could that be?

It didn’t matter. Indeed, it made things easier.

Still, shock wound through her, even as she should have been satisfied—after all, wasn’t this what she’d intended? To be hidden from him in plain sight? Wasn’t this part of the plan she’d worked on again and again as she’d heavily kohled her eyes and stained her lips? And put on Dahlia’s mask?

She would never again meet him as Grace.

Especially not here, in his Mayfair home—the home of a line of dukes. And even if she did—even if he had expected her—he wouldn’t expect her like this. Not elaborately turned out in the dress, the mask, the hair, the maquillage—all perfectly designed for a woman of the height of aristocracy. A woman who’d had the best education, a battalion of ladies’ maids, wealth beyond reason, and a life of privilege, sparing no expense.

He’d expect her to come as she always had, in trousers and topcoat, boots over her knees and weapons over her shoulders, ready to take prisoners.

And if she had come, he wouldn’t have smiled at her.

They did not smile at each other any longer.

He bowed low, and for a moment, Grace was thrown back in time, or maybe not back. Maybe tossed sideways, into another time, another place, when they would have crossed paths not as once friends and forever enemies, but as a lady and a gentleman.

A duke and a duchess.

She rejected the thought and relished his ignorance as she sank into a low curtsy.

“Your Grace.”

He tilted his head at her words. “You have the better of me.”

She willed Grace away for now, letting Dahlia take the lead with a flirt. She was here for a reason, after all. “I am sure that is not true.”

“It is.” He leaned in closer. “Do you have a name?”

Only the one you gave me.

The response—which she would never say aloud—tore through her, but years of practice kept her from revealing it. “Not tonight.”

That smile again, the one that set her back with confusion and something she was not interested in naming. Something she would never take for herself.

He looked to the duchess. “And you, lady, will you tell me your name?”

The other woman looked at the duke, and then Grace, and then the duke once more. “I’m not certain you wish to know my name, Duke.” Grace’s eyes went wide at the reply, even as the words dissolved into laughter, bright as bells. “In any event, I’m afraid I tire of conversation—no offense.” She was one of the few people in the world who could say such a thing and actually offer no offense. “And I see an empty swing hanging on the tree in the distance.” She wiggled her full bottom beneath her vibrant skirts. “Waiting for a peacock, I’m sure.”

Before a reply could form, the duchess was off, pushing between an elaborately dressed Marie Antoinette and a tall, forbidding plague doctor, and disappearing into the crowd, no doubt delighting in the idea that a duke and the owner of one of London’s most exclusive brothels were conversing—and due to her own influence. Grace gave a little growl of disappointment that they’d been left alone, even as she knew that alone was the only way she had a hope of understanding why he’d returned.

“Is your friend always so . . .”

“Fleeting?” Grace supplied. “Yes.”

“I was going to say eccentric,” he replied.

“That, too,” she said.

He looked to her then, “And you?”

She couldn’t help the little, secret smile. “I, too, am eccentric.”

“I was asking if you planned to be fleeting.” Somehow, in the crush and cacophony of people, his words were low and lush, and they settled deep in her belly even as she reminded herself that she was not to derive pleasure from this man.

This man who had thieved everything from her.